In prior telecommunications management networks, it was necessary to manually input the identities of the communications system elements within the network. The identity information was required at each element in the network. Consequently, when a network element was either added or deleted, each of the elements would have to be manually updated with the identity of the element or elements being added or deleted from the network. Additionally, when adding a network element, all the identity information of the other elements in the network would have to be manually inputted into the new network element. Such manual inputting of the identity information into the network elements is not only time consuming, but prone to errors.
One telecommunications management network that uses a so-called "Directory Services Network Element" (DSNE) to automatically maintain identity information of network elements in a centralized data base is disclosed in co-pending United States patent application Ser. No. 07/990,479 (now pending). In the noted management network, the DSNE maintains all of the identity information of network elements within one or more sub-networks associated with it. One problem with such a management network is that proper operation of the centralized database depends on the ability of the network elements to communicate with the DSNE. If the DSNE fails, or the communications path between a network element and the DSNE fails, the network elements can no longer communicate with the DSNE and with each other. Another drawback of such a management network is that a network element must always query the DSNE before it can communicate with another network element in its sub-network. This, in turn, increases network communications traffic and introduces delays in inter-network element communications.